Back when we were putting together this whole trip, a few people were surprised our first stop would be Vietnam. We’re sure many people growing up in the 60s and 70s would never have dreamed of traveling to Hanoi, Saigon, or Phnom Penh. For us today, the cities of Central Asia possess that same forbidden draw—we desperately want to go to Kabul and Islamabad. But while we hope that someday we won’t think twice about packing our bags for Afghanistan or Pakistan, for now we will have to settle for getting tantalizingly close, just across the border in the Chinese province of Xinjiang.

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